How to Be an Antiracist (One World Essentials)

by Ibram X. Kendi

BEHAVIORAL RACISTS SEE it differently from antiracists, and even from each other. In the decades before the Civil War, behavioral racists argued over whether it was freedom or slavery that caused supposed mediocre Black behavior. To proslavery theorists, Black behavioral deficiencies stemmed from freedom, either in Africa or among emancipated slaves in America. In the states that “retained the ancient relation” between White mastery and Black slavery, Blacks “had improved greatly in every respect—in numbers, comfort, intelligence, and morals,” Secretary of State John C. Calhoun explained to a British critic in 1844. This proslavery position held after slavery. Freed Blacks “cut off from the spirit of White society”—their civilizing masters—had degenerated into the “original African type,” with behavioral traits ranging from hypersexuality, immorality, criminality, and laziness to poor parenting, Philip Alexander Bruce maintained in his popular 1889 book, The Plantation Negro as a Freeman.